Time in a Bottle
by Witch0fTime
Summary: For almost a year, Eridan Ampora has had more than friendly feelings for his dormmate, Sollux Captor, but hasn't gained the courage to tell him. Now that Sollux has been severely injured, will Eridan be able to tell him how he feels? Humanstuck EriSol with guest appearances from Nepeta Leijon and (indirectly) Aradia Megido. Rated M to make sure no one pitches a fit.


The suspense was killing him.

He'd been sitting on the bench outside the room for almost two hours now. Two hours of excruciating worry. Every time the door opened, he'd jump a bit, and then stand up expectantly only to be waved away, dismissed. "You can't see him yet. He's still asleep and it hasn't been long enough since his examination." And every time he would sink back down onto the bench and try not to die as the worry crept back to consume him.

And every time, he'd wonder why he didn't just go home. And every time, he'd remind himself that there wasn't anywhere else he'd rather be.

The door opened a crack beside him. His head jerked to look at it reflexively, and the young nurse scowled at him. His face must have been quite a sight, however, because her face immediately softened. She bit her lip in thought, looked behind her, then opened the door a bit more.

"I'm not supposed to let you in yet, but you look so...well, distraught," she said softly. He bolted to his feet, then tenderly reached for the doorknob and pulled the door open the rest of the way. One look into the room and his heart sank.

"Your name is...Eridan, right?" The nurse's whispered voice barely registered with him. Lying completely unconscious on the bed in front of him was his best friend, Sollux Captor. His face was covered in bruises and even though the rest of his body was hidden under the covers, Eridan was almost positive that it was in a full-body cast. Eridan closed his eyes, the memory of his friend's blood-streaked, twitching body coming back to him too strongly to ignore.

The nurse's hand on his shoulder startled him, and his eyes flew open in a panic. "I'm sorry. I can tell he was a really close friend of yours."

Eridan tried to force his features into a smile. "You could say that," he managed.

She nodded sympathetically. "Eridan, right?" she repeated. He nodded mutely. "I need to mark down that you were here. It's protocol. Sorry." She made a quick note on a clipboard.

Eridan shuffled to the other side of the room, dragging a chair over to sit beside the bed. "Oh no you don't," the nurse scolded him. "I've let you in, but I really shouldn't have. And I definitely can't have you staying here for any amount of time. Just have it be enough that he's alive, ok? Which is pretty lucky, considering what happened..." Her voice faded to nothing as her hand on his back propelled him back out the door and shut it with a quiet click.

Eridan slowly turned around and placed one, shaking hand on the wood of the door. He closed his eyes, and a single tear streaked down his cheek. _Please be okay when I come back._ Then he lifted his head, wiped the tear away, and began the long walk back through the maze of hospital to his car.

No time seemed to have passed before he found himself numbly opening the car door, which he had irresponsibly left unlocked in his panic, and stepped inside. He pulled the door shut, swinging his leg into the car as he did so. The low thud resonated through the car for a moment. As it faded, his will seeped away. His keys were only a few feet away at most, somewhere in his backpack. But he couldn't even make himself open his eyes, let alone dig through his textbooks to find the car keys he had carelessly thrown in before he had launched into a dead run towards the hospital earlier. He sighed in defeat, too tired by now to care enough to wipe away the hundreds of tears that washed his face. No longer able even to hold himself upright, his forehead hit the wheel and the sobs that he had been suppressing became audible.

_Sollux..._

His mind was consumed by that single word, those two syllables that held so much fear for him. _What if he can't ever use his legs again? What if his hands are going to be paralyzed and he'll never complete his programming degree? What if he never even wakes up? What if he's dying right now and I'm sitting here in my car crying like an idiot? What if I never see him alive again?_ Another, more sinister voice whispered in the back of his mind. _What would you do then, slick? You've really fucked up this time, haven't you?_

Eridan shook his head, silently begging himself to stop. _Pull yourself together. He didn't look that bad. He'll be fine in the morning. Everything is going to be fine._

_So now you're lying to yourself? That'll definitely work out for you in the long run. Have fun with that._

_Shut up._ Slowly, Eridan's uncontrolled sobs died down to manageable sniffles. Wiping his eyes with one shaking hand, he reached down into his backpack with the other, fumbling around until the cold metal of one of his keys jabbed into his palm. "Ow..." he muttered half-heartedly as he extracted them. In one motion he jabbed the keys unnecessarily harshly into the ignition and turned. His engine whined a complaint at him before settling down to its usual purr. His feet mechanically moved to the pedals, his right hand reaching up to adjust the rearview mirror. He flicked the headlights onto the high beams and steered himself carefully onto the deserted road.

Eridan had hoped that the drive would help him clear his thoughts, but, as before, no time at all seemed to have passed before he was pulling into the student lot and parking in his regular spot. He couldn't help a half-smile from barely curving his lips as his headlights illuminated the yellow-graffiti message on the asphalt, "Pretentious Asshole". He could remember when he drove back from work the first time it was there. He had been so angry, and he knew before he even returned to his dorm room that Sollux had done it. That had been Freshman year, back when they had hated each other. Eridan cringed slightly as he remembered all of the insults that had been flown back and forth across the room that night. Sollux had ended up storming out and sleeping on the floor of one of his friends' dorms. Eridan remembered that he had been so happy, to be alone in the room for once. Just that once, Eridan didn't have to hear the incessant clicking of Sollux's keyboard as he feverishly completed the homework due the next day. But now he knew he would do anything to be able to walk into the room and see Sollux's face lit up only by the eerie light of the screen.

Killing the engine, Eridan pulled his backpack onto his shoulder and shoved his keys into his jeans pocket. As he got out of the car, he remembered the recent installation of the carding system. With a sigh, he dug around in his numerous pockets before removing an already-cracked student ID card. He shut the car door with a light kick, then walked across the parking lot and slid his card through the scanner. The light turned green, and he heard the lock click inside the door. He pulled it open quickly, not wanting to be stuck in the embarrassing position of having to re-scan his card because he didn't open the door fast enough. It swung shut behind him with a small thud and click, and he wandered almost robotically down the hall, going through his usual routine of calling and boarding the elevator to the fourth floor. He half-expected the quiet yet infinitely annoying radio music to be playing through the tiny speakers at the top of the elevator, but apparently it was too late at night for that. The ride up to his room allowed him no distraction from his sadness.

Even as he exited the elevator, the deathly silence remained unbroken. He knew better than to think everyone was asleep, though. _They're probably all being college idiots down at the bar together._ He extracted his keys from his pocket again as he reached his dorm, Room 413, and quickly unlocked the door. The darkness and silence inside only reinforced his nagging depression. With a sigh, he flicked on the lights and closed the door. Even without Sollux's customary greeting of, "Hey, fishfathe", he couldn't help but answer, "At least I'm not the one with the lisp."

He knew he should probably shower, but the thought of doing anything at all except collapsing onto his bed felt like too much effort. As he lay staring at the ceiling, his final thoughts before he drifted off were memories of Sollux.

_The first day at college, and you've already gotten in a fight with your roommate, a bipolar asshole named Sollux Captor. He had some giant computer set up he insisted needed to take up the entire table that was supposed to be shared space. You told him very clearly that no, he could not commandeer the desk space and would you please set up your fucking computer somewhere else, thank you._

_And now you are trying to sleep, and he is sitting at the desk with his computer even though you told him not to, madly pounding the keyboard._

_"Can't you please stop for ten fuckin' minutes so I can go to sleep?!" you finally scream at him._

_He turns to you, eyebrow twitching. "No," he replies frankly. He mutters something else under his breath._

_"What did you just say?" Your teeth are clenched as you try to contain your anger._

_"I thaid no, fishfathe. Now if you'll excuthe me, I actually have thomething to get done."_

_You barely resist the impulse to get out of bed and beat the smaller boy to a bloody pulp, roll over, and eventually manage to get some sleep by shoving your head under the covers and the pillow._

_Christmas break has rolled around. Unlike most of the people at college, you have absolutely no desire to visit your controlling family. You have finally gotten out of that house, and you are determined never to return. Sollux, on the other hand, had talked of nothing else but how excited he was to get away from both this hell hole and you, his awful roommate. You can't suppress the smile as Sollux hoists his bags onto his shoulders and strides out of the room without once looking back, the door drifting shut behind him. "Alone at last," you mutter to yourself._

_You sigh, turning onto your side in the chair and reaching for your book, the one that you wouldn't have dared to read if Sollux was around. He would have made fun of you for sure. You open it, savoring your freedom, and dive in._

_Five hours, two books, and three cups of coffee later, you are so overwhelmed with the joy at being able to get an undisturbed night of rest, you can't even be bothered to clean up the mess you made from eating. You flick off the light, sighing yet again as you revel in the absolute silence of the room. The last thing you think as you drift off is that this break could not possibly go by slow enough._

_It's a few days after Christmas break now, and classes have resumed at the same or harder difficulty. Sollux is sitting at the desk, which, for once, is slightly cleaned off. He has moved his computer and the tangle of wires accompanying it onto the floor next to him and has spread out in front of him an enormous textbook with several complex maps laid out on the pages and a suspiciously blank piece of lined paper. His head is being supported by a hand, the fingers of which are tangled exasperatedly through his hair, and his other hand taps the desk sporadically, no doubt wishing he could be typing instead. His pencil lays uselessly on the desk next to the book._

_At last, he lets out a cry of frustration, standing up quickly and causing the chair to fall over. "I give up! It'th impothible!"_

_Something about that day had put you in a particularly good mood. You look up from your math homework, which you had been struggling with as well, and eye him skeptically. "Somethin' wrong, Captor?"_

_He glares at you. "No. Everything ith jutht peachy."_

_You stand up. "Come on, Captor. I'm in a good mood. Don't spoil it." Cautiously, you enter the den of the beast. "What's givin' ya trouble?"_

_Sollux's anger turns to distrust. "Why should you care? You hate me, and believe me, you are not on my litht of favorite people."_

_You shrug. "Like I said, Captor, I'm in a good mood. Besides, if I help you that's one less thing that you'll be stayin' up doing until God knows when, preventin' me from sleepin'._

_Sollux frowned. "Whatever." He sighs in defeat. "It'th hithtory. European hithtory. I don't even know why I'm taking it. My girlfriend'th really into it, I gueth. I thought it'd impreth her." He crosses his arms in defense, and you raise your hands in surrender._

_"Look, Captor. I'll make you a deal. I'm okay at history, so I'll help you with your history. In exchange..." You trail off, suddenly hit with embarrassment._

_"What?"_

_You decide you can't very well stop now. "In exchange, you'll help me with my math. Deal?" You extend your hand._

_He looks at you incredulously, then rolls his eyes. "Sure. Deal." He shakes your hand quickly, then slips out of your grasp as if it were repulsive._

_After a few weeks of this uneasy truce, you've found it easier to talk to Sollux. He hasn't turned out to be as bad as you originally thought. And once you showed him that you had weaknesses, like your perpetual ignorance in Calculus and your absolute frustration at anything that required attention to detail, he was better able to share his, like his difficulty understanding political intrigue and Shakespearean dialogue. Very slowly, you've found that you look forward to coming home after work rather than dreading it. Sollux, too, seems now to enjoy your company at least to a certain extent. You've even gotten used to the ritual pounding of the keyboard as you drift to sleep._

_As semesters, with all of their dual panic and laziness, irresponsible partying and frantic studying, came and went and homework settled down just a bit, you find yourself spending time in your dorm with Sollux instead of out and about with other friends. His constant chatter about how great his old life was compared to now gradually switches to questions about yours. Although you originally combated his prying inquiries with cynical sarcasm and snitty retorts, you inevitably find yourself telling him much more about your family and life than you had expected. And in return, he tells you stories of his own childhood. The days move by regularly, and you discover that you have a lot more in common than would be apparent to the average eye. You both enjoy a good laugh, and you both prefer warm weather to cold. He introduces you to a thousand online video games, which you instantly begin to obsess over, and in return you give him a few pointers on cooking so he doesn't have to live entirely off of cheap ramen. You begin to think of him not as a constant bother, but as a needed friend. A necessary part of life._

_Spring break has arrived, along with your dread of the moment. Sollux is standing in the middle of the dorm, suitcase in hand, but unlike at Christmas he is not smiling at the thought of returning home. He sighs. "Honethtly, I'm not looking forward to thith. Latht time I went home..."_

_"What?" you press, concerned._

_"Well, my family wath fine. But my girlfriend wath all...weird. It'th been really hard, thinthe she didn't end up getting into college with me." He pauses in thought. "I don't know. I thought it would be different. I thought we'd be able to keep in contact better, but she hathn't been emailing me ath much anymore, and I've been thpending leth time online anywayth thinthe we've been hanging out more lately. I don't even know if I love her anymore." He shrugs. "But you probably don't care, huh, ED?"_

_You smile and roll your eyes "Oh please, Sol. You're my best friend. Don't try to contradict me on that. At this point, I think that's fair. I also think its true. And I also think you're one of my only friends. Believe me, I don't mind listenin' to your troubles. It's better by far than havin' no one to listen to at all."_

_He smiles back at you. "Thankth, ED." He pulls out his phone to check the time. "I better go. Otherwithe I might mith the plane."_

_You open the door for him since his hands are full, and he steps out into the hallway. "Thee you in a couple weekth, I gueth." He waves even though he's holding the suitcase. You wave back._

_"See ya then, Sol." You close the door._

_After two weeks of incredible loneliness, you cannot bear the suspense as the minutes until Sollux's imminent return tick by. You hear the annoyingly loud tone from the elevator signifying that someone is getting off on this floor. You smile in anticipation. Tired footsteps trudge down the hall, stopping outside the door. After a few seconds of scrabbling, the door swings open._

_"Hey, fithfathe," Sollux mutters._

_"Hey, Sol..." You add an almost questioning inflection to the end of the sentence. He doesn't seem to notice, dropping his suitcase unceremoniously on the ground and collapsing into the nearest chair, turning away from you in the process._

_For a few moments you stand awkwardly, unsure of what to do. Finally, you manage to gain the courage to approach him. "Sol? Is somethin' wrong?"_

_He doesn't respond. Cautiously, you put a hand on his shoulder. It's shaking. "Sol? Oh my god, Sol, what happened?" He shakes his head, and for an instant you see the silvery glint of tears on his face. You rush to the other side of the room, grabbing the chair and pulling it over to sit next to him. For a few minutes he can't speak, and you just sit next to him with one arm around his shoulders telling him everything will be okay. When he finally gains a little control of himself, he shakes his head again._

_"My girlfriend tried to kill herthelf. And it'th my fault. I almotht killed her." He took a deep breath, obviously trying to fight the ever-present tears._

_"Just tell me what happened. I'm here for you."_

_He nods. "When I went back, I hung out with my family a bit, and that wath fine. Or at leatht, ath fine ath it wath going to be. But then I went to go thee my girlfriend, and...she wath tho different from how she uthed to be. She wath wearing all black. She uthed to be tho colorful, and now she only wearth black. She had even dyed her hair black. And she wouldn't talk to me. I think she wath deprethed or thomething. And, well...I had dethided on the plane that I would tell her it wathn't working. And I didn't want to be that athhole that breakth up online, tho...I told her. And she freaked out at me, telling me she wath gonna kill me. Then she jutht thorta fell to the ground and cried for a long time moaning to herthelf. I didn't know what to do." He paused, sniffing._

_"Go on?"_

_"Well...I made her get up off the floor and thit down, and then I went back home. I had promithed I'd only be gone an hour, and tho I had to...and then the nextht day, I got a call from the hothpital. They thaid she'd overdothed on pain medth." He stopped again, the tears flowing once more. "She could have died, ED."_

_"Sol..." You aren't sure what to say. "Look...if what you're sayin' is true, then it sounds like she was lookin' for an excuse to...you know. I think...from what you've told me before, she used to be really happy. So somethin' happened to her, and she got depressed."_

_"What if it wath me? I thtopped emailing her ath often..."_

_"Which is perfectly natural. You've got college to work through. She's not even goin' to college, right?" He nods. "So she can't expect you to email her every night. I think somethin' else happened...It's not your fault, in any event. You can't control what other people do. And if the relationship wasn't workin' out, it's not a crime to tell her so. You were only being honest."_

_Sollux nods again, swallowing and raising his head to look you directly in the eye. "ED..." he whispers. You bring him into a tight hug, feeling his tears soak into your shoulder. You sit there like that for a long time, until he stops shaking and slowly pulls away._

_"I think I'm gonna be okay...thankth ED."_

_It didn't take much longer after that. You find himself constantly thinking about how much you wish the day was over so you could go back to your dorm room and see Sollux. You are always wondering if Sollux is remembering to eat, if Sollux is feeling okay, if Sollux needs anything. Your every waking second is consumed by thoughts of Sollux, but you don't even notice. Not until summer do you realize. Summer, when you have plans to stay in town, renting a house while the owners are away, and he's planning to return home. Now he has left, not without several goodbyes and reminders to keep in touch, but nevertheless gone. You sit in the unfamiliar house with no one to talk to and let your mind wander. Despite every effort of yours to think of anything except the gaping hole in your life left by Sollux, you can't help but return to wondering if Sollux is okay, whether or not he'll be online later in the night, whether or not he'll remember to email you to tell you he made it safely. At last you confront yourself in your own mind. And at last you realize why you can't think of anything else but him. Because he is all you have left in the world, and you need him._

_Sophomore year of college has begun. You met Sollux at the airport the day before, and all your doubts about yourself were swept away the moment you saw him again. He seemed happy, chatting away as you drove about his summer, how all of his worries about having to deal with his ex-girlfriend were for nothing because she had left town, anyway. Now after settling back into school, the days breeze by, every conversation with him lifting your spirits to new heights. Still, at night as you fall asleep to the lullaby of his swiftly typing fingers, you wonder if you will ever gain the courage to confess your feelings to him. Every time you set a date for yourself, you always find an excuse for yourself as to why you cannot on that particular day express to him how much you need him. You keep telling yourself that you have time. He isn't going anywhere. You'll tell him eventually._

_And then, the accident happened._

_Sollux had been jokingly complaining for weeks that he was gaining too much weight from the wonderful meals you cook every night for him. You had smiled and shaken your head in amusement with every word of it. This night in particular he was getting antsy, complaining that he had a roaring headache and that he felt 'tingly'. Every little sound caused him to jump a bit, so you told him to go take a walk. "It'll burn off that weight you hate so much, and I can't stand you bein' so twitchy."_

_You freeze at the sound of the bone-chilling series of thumps, and your heart jumps out of your chest as you burst out of the room, thoughts already racing to Sollux. As you run down the hallway towards the place where the sound came from, other kids are poking their heads out of their rooms to see what's happening. You plead with any god that might be listening that what you fear happened didn't. When you reach the end of the hall, though, you know your suspicions are true. You open the door that leads to the stairwell. The door shuts ominously behind you. You don't see any sign of Sollux on the stairs in front of you. Panic grips you as you look down the center hole between the flights of stairs to see if Sollux is farther down._

_Something is laying at the very bottom of the stairs that exit onto the first floor._

_The rush to the bottom of the stairs is a blur. When you reach the final stair, you come to a dead stop from sheer disbelief. A small pool of blood is forming under Sollux's head, and all four of his limbs are splayed at unnatural angles. His mouth is open, and a thin streak of drool traces down his jawline. His whole body is shaking slightly._

_Ever so carefully, you lift the top half of Sollux's body off of the last few stairs and onto flat ground. He almost convulses out of your grasp, but you dare not let yourself drop him. Once he's lying flat, you stand up to search for help._

_The rest of the night is a frenzy of running, panic, flashing lights, and snippets of conversation._

_"...any symptoms before?"_

_"...all day in front of a computer..."_

_"...highly abnormal..."_

_"Could be recently contracted..."_

_And the most horrifying: "...injuries are too severe..."_

_At the end of it all, the frenzy settles down to you sitting anxiously on the bench outside of the room._

_Waiting._

The morning was cold, and life no better than he left it when Eridan woke. Groggily, he sat up in bed and had to remind himself that Sollux would not be passed out on the other bed, that he didn't have to wake him up and force him into the kitchenette to eat something. He walked morosely across the room and dug around in his backpack to find his phone. No messages. He sighed in relief. When he had first gotten to the hospital, he had put down his phone number and told them to call if his condition changed. While he couldn't expect it to have improve, at least it didn't get any worse.

Glossing through his morning routine, he ran down the hall, refusing to look at the door that led to the stairs. The elevator down to the first floor allowed him time enough to worry much more than he should have, and the drive to the hospital only amplified it further. He gave the secretary his name and the room he would be visiting and took off without a backwards glance.

The nurse that had let him in the night before had been replaced by a different one. Sollux lay, white as a sheet, on the bed, his eyes still unopened. Eridan cleared his throat. "Has he...?"

"Woken up at all?" the nurse finished for him. "No. He mumbled a little in his sleep last night, but he hasn't been conscious." Eridan nodded, eyes still locked on Sollux's face.

"Do you know what caused it? I mean, he wasn't suicidal, and he isn't particularly clumsy, and..."

"Well...maybe you'd better sit down." Eridan's heart sank as he pulled over the chair to sit by the bed.

"I suppose I should get straight to the point. Sollux had a seizure."

"What? But he's never–"

"Please don't interrupt. We think he has developed epilepsy, but we haven't come up with a cause yet. That isn't abnormal. Would you mind answering a few questions? I trust you knew him well?"

"Yes," he heard himself say. "We shared a dorm."

"Had he ever shown signs of it before? Told you about it?"

"No."

The nurse made a quick note on her clipboard. "Okay. My next few questions involve last night. Why was he on the stairs at the time of his seizure?"

"I told him to take a walk." _I told him to go out there when he was losing control._

"Why?"

"He was getting antsy." _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

"What do you mean exactly?"

"Well, he was complaining about having a headache. I assumed it was from spending too much time in front of his computer. And he was sort of twitchy. Every little sound made him jump. Oh, and he said he felt tingly." _Why was I such an idiot? It seems so obvious that something was wrong with him._

"I see. Are you aware that those are among the early warning signs of an impending seizure?"

"No." Eridan closed his eyes. _I will not cry in front of this stranger._

She finished up making some notes on her clipboard. "I think that's all my questions for now." She paused and bit her lip. "There's something else, though."

Eridan froze. "What?"

The nurse swallowed, at a loss for words. "He fell from the...?"

"Fourth floor."

"Yes. Did you see it happen?"

"No."

"Well...he sustained a lot of damage." She stopped, looking away uncomfortably.

Eridan's vision clouded with the tears he'd been so desperately trying to keep at bay. "What are you sayin'?"

"Well...it isn't positive yet, but we aren't sure he's...going to make it."

Eridan's breath caught in his throat, and his hands moved of their own volition to cover his face as the tears spilled over.

"I'm very sorry," the nurse continued, "but like I said, it isn't final. His lungs are very badly damaged, but we need more information before we can be certain."

Eridan took a deep breath and did his best to make himself understandable. "But is it more likely that he'll...?" His tears caught hold of him again.

The nurse grimaced. "It is more likely that he will not recover." The nurse said something else, but Eridan couldn't hear it. He couldn't hear anything except the screaming inside of him. The screaming that told him it was his fault, that Sollux was going to die and it was all his fault. That Sollux would never know how much he loved him, because he was never going to recover. He allowed himself to fall forward, his forehead hitting the edge of the bed and his whole body shaking from the unforgiving grief.

Perhaps minutes or perhaps hours later, the tears stopped flowing. Eridan sat up in the chair, not daring to allow himself a look in the mirror. He knew he was a wreck. As his vision cleared, he realized he was alone in the room with Sollux. The nurse must have left out of sympathy. Eridan turned to study Sollux. He was still as pale as ever, and his breaths shallow. With a final sigh, Eridan stood to leave the room.

A small, pained cough from behind him stopped him dead in his tracks.

"E...D?"

Relief washed over Eridan, tearing away all of his fears. "Sol..." he murmured. He turned. Sollux's eyes were bloodshot, squinting. He tried to turn his head, but apparently found it too taxing. He closed his eyes again. "Sol?"

"Where am I?" His voice was barely above a whisper, and breathy. Like he couldn't control his air.

Eridan tried to smile. "At the hospital."

Sollux frowned almost imperceptibly, his brow creasing slightly. "Why am I..." His sentence was cut off by a series of racking coughs. Sollux's face twisted in pain, a single tear streaking down his cheek. When the coughing ceased, he gasped for breath that wouldn't come. His eyes widened in fear as he desperately tried to get enough air into his damaged lungs. Eridan could only watch in horror.

When Sollux was finally breathing normally again, Eridan was having a hard time keeping his composure. "Oh my god, Sol...I'm so sorry. This is all my fault."

"What?" Sollux's voice was now so quiet that Eridan could only tell what he said by watching his lips move.

"You had a seizure. I'm so sorry. I sent you out on a walk, do you remember? And you must have decided to take the stairs, but you had a seizure and fell...I'm so sorry, Sol. I sent you away. I sent you away and you got hurt. And now..." Eridan couldn't continue.

"It wasn't your fault..." Sollux murmured, slightly louder. Eridan jerked up.

"Sol, your lisp."

"What?"

"It's gone. Oh god."

Sollux's brow furrowed once more, this time in concentration. "I can't feel them...my teeth. Where are my...teeth?" His eyes opened, and there was fear in his eyes. "ED, I can't feel my legs either. And my left arm..."

Eridan nodded. He had cried so much today, he didn't even notice that tears were once more falling down his face. "Sollux, I'm so, so sorry."

The door opened behind him. The nurse from the night before peered in. "Are you still in here, Eridan?" She closed the door behind her, then breathed in sharply. "Oh my god, he's awake! Why didn't you call anyone?!" She pressed a small red button on the wall, then turned to Eridan. "You have to go now. We need to finish up our examination of Mr. Captor."

Every instinct in Eridan's body screamed at him not to leave, but he had no will. "Yes. Of course."

"Don't...leave..." Sol whispered disorientedly.

Eridan placed his hand on top of Sollux's forehead, no longer caring about anything at all. "I'll be back. Don't worry, Sol." He almost added that everything would be okay, but he couldn't bear to lie. Not now.

Again, the drive home seemed to take no time at all. Standing in the middle of his dorm room, Eridan would have cried once again if he had had any tears left. He felt as if there were a thousand tons laying across his shoulders, and his sadness threatened to overwhelm him. He had just enough energy to take off his well-worn shoes before collapsing across his bed, not even taking the time to pull the covers back.

He woke in the middle of the night to the irritating sound of his cell phone buzzing against the table. Groaning, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. _What on earth could someone be callin' this early in the..._ Eridan's thought trailed off as his groggy mind realized exactly why someone would be calling him this late in the evening.

The next moment he was bolting out of bed, dashing across the floor in a race to see if he could get to the phone before it redirected the caller to voicemail. But by the time he had stumbled across the pitch-dark room, the phone had stopped ringing. Cursing himself under his breath, he resigned himself to wait the few minutes before he could access the voicemail. He flipped on the lights and sank into the chair nearest to the table, determined to stare unrelentingly at his phone until it alerted him of the voicemail.

The instant it buzzed, he was on it. His fingers brushed madly over the screen, keying in his password and dialing his own phone number. He would have expected himself to be shaking from the nerves, but his hands were steady. He felt numb.

_You have one unheard message._

_First unheard message:_

_Hello._ It was the voice of the very first nurse, the one who had taken pity on him. _This is Nepeta Leijon from the hospital. I...okay, this is silly. I've talked to you before, so I'm not going to be formal. Sollux's condition has gotten worse. A lot worse. He had another seizure, and...well, I think you should come to the hospital as soon as you can._ There was a deep breath._ I'm not supposed to tell you this kind of thing, but I can tell he is really important to you. Sollux isn't going to make it through the night. We estimate that he'll live another twenty-four hours, tops. So...I really hope that you just barely missed this call and you are awake, because otherwise he might be d–...just come, ok?_

The phone had dropped out of his hand, hitting the floor hard and cracking the screen, long before the mechanical voice could remind him of how to delete the message. In his hurry, Eridan even forgot to shut the door behind him. He pressed the elevator call button, but before it could reach him he was bounding down the fateful stairs, desperate to get to his car and then to the hospital.

The crisply clean automatic doors slid silently to the sides to welcome him into the hospital, seeming to laugh at him as they did. His body led him through the intricate maze of hallways even though his mind was so numb, he couldn't even remember his last name. He burst through the door of Sollux's room to find the nurse, Nepeta, sitting at the bedside next to Sollux with a worried expression on her face. She looked up as he entered.

"Oh thank god..." she murmured.

Eridan couldn't respond. The sound of Sollux's breathing, shallow and unbearably labored, shattered his senses.

"He was saying your name in his sleep before." She paused, her face flushing a bit. "Are you two...?"

Eridan shook his head sadly, a wayward tear sculpting yet another path down his well-worn face.

"I see...I'm sorry."

Sollux's face twitched slightly. Eridan's legs gave way, and he fell to his knees. Slowly, Sollux's eyelids fluttered open. His eyes were wild, full of fear, and they rolled about, looking in every direction. No longer able to stand it, Eridan reached under the thick quilt and found Sollux's good hand, his right. The plastic cast lay thickly around his wrist, and his hand was as cold as ice. "Sol..."

Sollux's eyes flitted over Eridan's face for a moment, but there was no sign of recognition in them, only panic.

The sound of the closing door behind them caused Eridan to jump a bit. He turned. Nepeta had left, and the room seemed so large without her. He turned back to face Sollux.

"Sol?" he whispered again. "It's me. Eridan." The name seemed to cause a reaction in Sollux, and a small smile seemed to curve his lips. "Sol, I don't know how much of this you can understand, but..." He stopped, the words he had so longed to say now freezing in his throat. "Just know that I'm here for you, and I'm not leavin'. No matter what. That's a promise." Sollux's grin widened just a bit, and the fear drained out of his eyes. His eyelids fluttered back down.

Eridan smiled. Sollux's breathing was no better, but at least he wasn't terrified anymore. He lay back in his chair a bit, his hand never letting go of Sollux's. As his heart slowed down to a more regular beat, his eyes, too, slowly closed. His breathing evened out, and when Nepeta peered in a few minutes later to make sure everything was fine, she couldn't contain a smile of her own as she silently shut the door again.

Hours later, Eridan was awakened by a small pressure on his hand. His sleep-encrusted eyes slowly opened, his face contorting into a sleepy grimace. "What?" he murmured.

"Hey, fishface."

Eridan sat up, eyes blinking rapidly to clear his vision. Sollux's eyes were still shut, but the small pressure on Eridan's hand remained. At last, Eridan realized that Sollux must have tightened his grip to try and wake Eridan, since he couldn't manage anything else.

"At least I'm not the one with the lisp," he replied instinctively.

Sollux coughed, his chest heaving. "Neither am I, anymore." He tried to smile reassuringly, but his face twisted in pain before he could. Eridan could only feel futile as Sollux struggled with his injuries. "ED?" he finally whispered.

"What, Sol?"

"I'm dying, aren't I?"

Eridan's breath stopped. "No," he said just a fraction of a second too late. "You aren't dying. You are going to be just fine." Even as the lie escaped his lips, Eridan regretted them.

"Don't...don't try and make it easier." He paused, breathing in too slowly to gain enough air to continue. "I can feel it. Somehow, I just know. So this is what it feels like to be dying." He laughed bitterly, the sound so feeble Eridan's heart just about broke. "I never thought it would be this painful. At least I can't feel my legs. And half of my chest. I guess it would be worse if I could."

"Oh Sol...I'm so sorry."

"For what? For being here for me every hour of every day for the past year? For being the one I could talk to about anything, no matter what else was happening? For making sure I remembered to eat and sleep and get up in the morning? You don't have to be sorry about anything."

There was a long pause, and Eridan feared that Sollux had lost his coherency. At last, Sollux whispered Eridan's name again, so faintly that Eridan had to lean in so his face was a maddening distance away from Sollux's face.

"ED...I don't think I can hold on much longer. Please...I want you to do something for me after I...you know."

"Anything you ask, Sol."

"I want you to listen to a song. It's called...Time in a Bottle. I want you to listen to it for me and think about me while you do. Will you promise me?"

Eridan answered without even hesitating. "I promise."

"Thank you..." Sollux's eyes lost focus on Eridan, slowly wandering around the room before his eyes shut. His breathing intensified in speed, but remained as shallow as ever. Eridan lightly squeezed Sollux's hand, sitting back but not daring to move any further. _He's going to come back again...this won't be the last time I talk to him...will it?_ But as he hoped with all of his heart that Sollux would recover again, the seconds stretched into minutes that stretched into hours. At last, Sollux's breathing became deathly slow, until Eridan could barely hear it at all. _I will not leave him. A promise is a promise._

The door behind him opened a crack. "Eridan, I think you should go." Nepeta's sympathetic voice washed over him, leaving no impression.

"I can't. I promised him I wouldn't leave."

"But Eridan–"

He turned to face her, and his voice came out as a shout. "I promised! Don't you understand?! I..." His will left him, leaving him only a broken whisper. "I promised."

Nepeta nodded. "I understand." She took a deep breath. "I have to stay here now, though. Since he's so close...it's procedure." Eridan didn't respond. He was staring intently at Sollux's face, his back turned to Nepeta once more.

"Eridan? Did you hear me?"

"He's dead." Nothing else mattered to Eridan. Nepeta must have said something to him, but the sound was distorted. His mind raced along the same route over and over, always coming to the same conclusion.

_I'm so sorry, Sol, it's all my fault._

_I'm so sorry, Sol, it's all my fault._

_I'm so sorry, Sol, it's all my fault._

The obituary in the morning's paper was abhorrently short. Eridan couldn't even bear to read it._ I never even told him how much I cared._ His heart felt empty, pointless. His whole life seemed like a waste of space. Of time. A wasted hope spent on a desire too perfect to actually happen. Eridan couldn't do anything but sit on his floor in a tightly curled ball and weep.

_How could I let this happen? How could I have been so blind to Sollux's danger?_ His thoughts led him in an ever increasing downward spiral.

At last he couldn't stand it any longer. Almost robotically, he picked himself up off the floor. He had to do something or be consumed by his depression.

From across the room, Sollux's computer shone dully in the sunlight.

_I want you to listen to a song._ Sollux's voice was so clear in his mind, he could almost believe that he was standing somewhere just out of sight. Numbly, he walked across the room, opened the laptop, and searched the internet.

_It's called Time in a Bottle._

The first guitar and piano chords flowed eerily out of the computer's tiny speakers.

_I want you to listen to it for me and think about me while you do._

Eridan gasped as the song progressed to the chorus. It was everything he had tried to tell Sollux, everything that he had felt all this time and been unable to voice. Every moment of indecision, of procrastination. Every almost-confession that had ended with him telling himself he wasn't worthy yet, that Sollux deserved better. Those cold nights alone when Eridan had wanted more than anything to just hold Sollux's hand, to tell him everything that Eridan was keeping locked up inside where no one would ever find it. And the most terrible, the fear that if he did tell Sollux, that Sollux would reject him, say the words that would break Eridan's fragile heart.

When the song ended, Eridan started it again. As so many times before, his eyes brimmed with tears for a moment before they fell down his face, hitting the floor. But this time, there was a smile on his face.


End file.
